<p>Well about 5 years ago, two kids got in early decision abut didn’t matriculate to brown</p>
<p>as a result, brown has since hated us [only accepting 1 out of 37 applicants since then] {including 3 deferrals this year}</p>
<p>the one acceptance was a person who had a father and a grandmother at brown</p>
<p>Brown obviously blacklisted us, should I even bother applying</p>
<p>Did the two students not matriculate because of FA issues?</p>
<p>
I’m not sure how obvious that is; it depends on the calibur of the applying students.</p>
<p>
If you believe that Brown is a good place for you, I don’t see why not. It’s not obvious to me that Brown has blacklisted your school; it seems that they’d want the best candidates, rather than bearing a grudge and taking lesser candidates.</p>
<p>I suspect this kind of thing happens a lot when students apply to numerous schools. Do most kids at your school apply to many colleges, or are they starting to apply ED? If your school tends to have students who apply willy-nilly to many schools, colleges don’t like that. It’s a bit too hard to generalize year-to-year, but colleges do pay attention to their yield.</p>
<p>^^ You’re assuming colleges know how many schools people applied to, which they don’t.</p>
<p>my school sends quite a lot of kids to top schools including</p>
<p>Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Penn [a lot here], cornell [a lot here too], hopkins, emory, mit, columbia, etc</p>
<p>Brown is the only place not taking kids. in most cases the same kids getting into yale are applying to brown as well, but they get their yale acceptance and brown rejection</p>
<p>well at my school a lot of kids apply Early Decision [since finances isn’t that much of an issue in my community]</p>
<p>if they dont get in Early, they end up applying to a bunch of schools regular [assuming they are qualified]</p>
<p>Arzachel, I beg to differ! Colleges keep a close tab on trends, including the number of applications students send out. While they don’t have exact numbers, and those are trends, not specific to an individual, it does help determine their yield. If a HS has kids who don’t have issues with finances, like spectra’s, then kids are much more likely to apply to a much greater number of colleges. This, of course, only relates to RD. So, in spectra’s school, you’d have a much better chance of getting accepted if you applied ED, just because the school knows they are #1, but acceptance rates get tighter for RD.</p>
<p>we’re still blacklisted regardless</p>
<p>3 students who had somewhat of a shot all got deferred</p>
<p>1 of them: slightly higher GPA than me but I have much lower SAT
2nd: similar GPA, But I have much lower SAT
3rd: little lower GPA than me, but I have slightly higher SAT [but lower out of 1600]</p>
<p>But i was sure the person #1 was guaranteed in because she fit everything brown wants but wtvr</p>
<p>Same thing at my school, 3 deferred (including me). I was the only guy, but I am pretty sure I have a lower SAT and GPA than the other two psychotics. In a way it gave me hope that I could be deferred like those two, I am crossing my fingers.</p>
<p>If your story is true, that two students accepted to Brown early decision backed out of their agreement – and if financial aid was not the reason – then it could be possible that Brown is “punishing” your school and its college guidance department. Parents who post on college confidential often warn students that this could be the consequence of not taking ED seriously and backing out. </p>
<p>That said, I’ve never heard admissions say that and I suspect they would deny it and just say there were other reasons to not accept students. While to you a student may seem a “guaranteed in,” with Brown’s low acceptance rate NO ONE is guaranteed a spot (unless they are an athletic recruit). It could be pure coincidence that no student has been accepted since the two backed out of ED.</p>
<p>Even if Brown is “blacklisting” your school now, it eventually will accept someone, and that someone could be you.</p>
<p>
Nothing about Spectravoid’s ■■■■■■■■ post rings true.
If his school sends “a lot of kids” to H-Y-P and those other hyper-selective places then his school will be a readily identifiable place, and I challenge Spectravoid to identify it.
“Lots of kids” into H-Y-P will place it among a small handfull of schools in the Northeast (including my alma mater) and two or three schools elsewhere (e.g. Harvard-Westlake, St. Mark’s School of Texas).
No elite secondary school will have been “blacklisted” by Brown University. That’s rubbish.
All such schools function as preliminary screeners for selectivity (yes, the top secondary schools are meritocratic these days).
Go on, Spectravoid, tell us the name of your “blacklisted” school. I doubt you can or will, lest it turn out to be a place that isn’t so fecund of Ivy placement after all.</p>
<p>tnedifnocegelloc: There are many public schools that fair quite well in the admissions process. I’ve worked at Brown admissions for some time and have seen it first hand. Moreover, getting 15 or 20 kids into the Ivy League each year is considered “lots of kids” by most people’s standards…I highly doubt the OP is a ■■■■■, but I do think you should get off your high horse.</p>
<p>Thought I could add some input…</p>
<p>I actually go to spectravoid’s HS (not exactly sure who he is but I recognize the identical situation).</p>
<p>Everything he has said is true. It seems as if they have blacklisted our school, and I myself am having a difficult time determining whether or not to apply. Many of the students who have applied and been rejected in the past have had stats far above Brown’s median(s) and have been accepted by other elite institutions.</p>
<p>Of course, it could all simply be a coincidence; but there seems to be something more. The two students backing out of ED is merely a rumor, however. No one is quite sure why Brown dislikes us; but the head of our guidance dpt is especially biased against Brown as well, and discourages many applicants from applying due to our past history of enrollment.</p>
<p>I doubt Brown can hold a grudge for ever. Even the Montagues and Capulets stopped their fighting. Go for it. That would be a silly reason not to bother applying.</p>
<p>I believe no matter what, some of the accepts to other top schools but rejects from Brown can be explained away. Brown seems to take a different approach to admissions that doesn’t put quite as much emphasis on the numerical data. In addition, at my high school, I personally know a fair number of students who were rejected at a school or schools with lower accept rates, but accepted to Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. 1 of 37 is a pretty big sample, but there’s also the 1 person who was accepted, and it sounds like some qualified candidates may have been scared away (and the number says nothing of the calibur of the applicants; some may just not have been qualified at all). So…even if the school is blacklisted, someone has gotten in, so your case is not hopeless.</p>
<p>If the cost of applying, in money and time, is too much for something you perceive as a small chance, by all means follow your intuition. But if you just don’t want to receive a rejection, you’ll never know unless you try; if you could see yourself at Brown, see what happens.</p>
<p>Best of luck.</p>
<p>@the OP: How competitive are the students that are getting denied by Brown? Are we talking HYPS+Presidential scholars+International Physics Olympiad level or are they just going to other ivy league schools? If they are the former, than yes your situation is odd. However, if they are just getting into other schools around the competiveness of Brown than it’s probably just a conicidence. Admissions is weird. I’ve seen people on this forum that get into HYP and don’t get into Georgetown. However, if all schools more competitive than Brown are taking these students than I will agree that it is possible your school has sort of been “blacklistited.” Backing out of an ED agreement I hear is one of the things that really makes adcoms mad.</p>
<p>also, you should still apply. Even if your school is “blacklisted” it won’t be forever and maybe this year will be different.</p>
<p>Can you get your GC to call Brown and sort the issue out? That is, if the two kids weaseling out of ED isn’t a rumor. If your GC confronts the issue, and then sings your praises and emphasizes that this is your first choice (if, indeed, it is–if not, it’s probably not worth the trouble), I think the whole mess could be sorted out. </p>
<p>@golfer3, I agree that these sorts of admissions anomalies can happen to individuals, but when a prep school that has impressive relationships with Ivy schools and their ilk is, as a whole, discriminated against by a particular institution, that seems a little weird.</p>